Civil Hospital gets 2 more oxygen machines

Tribune News Service

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Jalandhar, August 29

To further bring down the case fatality rate by augmenting critical healthcare facility in Shaheed Babu Labh Singh Civil Hospital, the district administration has installed two more new High Flow Nasal Oxygen (HFNO) machines in its Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for ensuring speedy recovery of Covid patients with severe respiratory illness.

Now, the ICU has four HFNO machines, which will be immensely beneficial for persons having severe problems because of the coronavirus.

The machines will be utilised to treat serious patients. An amount of Rs1.6 lakh is approximately the cost of one HFNO machine.

Deputy Commissioner Ghanshyam Thori said level-III patients with respiratory issues need an additional level of oxygen and HFNO machine was the best suitable solution, which carries a large amount of oxygen. He said patients with severe problems were responding well to these machines besides having improvement in their health.

He said one HFNO machine supplies 60-litre oxygen per minute to patients and is easy to use rather than ventilators, which need an expert of required manpower to operate it.

Thori said HFNO provides warm and humidified oxygen to the body, which helps in maintaining the body’s temperature and cleaning the mechanism of the respiratory system. Hence, patients feel comfortable.

He said Shaheed Babu Labh Singh Civil hospital has 56 beds in the ICU for the treatment of level-III category patients. Apart from HFNO machines, multipara monitor, pulse oximeters, infusion pumps, suction machines and others are also being purchased for the Civil Hospital to ensure the best possible care for serious patients.

He said the priority was to take care of the old and vulnerable population with co-morbidities that were at the high risk of developing severe illness and appealed to people to not take the flu-like symptoms lightly and contact the doctors soon. He said people should not get panicky, as more cases were reported in the city due to aggressive testing.